Frank Portman - King Dork

The other thing my mom says about my dad’s death is that he was killed in the line of duty, protecting people. I can see why she liked to think of it, or for it to be thought of, that way. It kind of contradicted the “accident” theory, though.

There may have been a grain of truth in it, even so, but, like the accident story, it wasn’t straightforward. My dad was a detective working on narcotics and vice cases for the Santa Carla police, and he certainly did do a lot of protecting people in a sense. But that’s not how he died, either.

It wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks—some of them, anyway—

once I decided I wanted to. I was able to read about it in old newspapers on microfilm at the public library. After I read them, I continued to pretend I didn’t know what had happened. My mom pretended it was plausible that I wouldn’t have found out. We have a lot of those arrangements in my family.

My dad had been parked on the shoulder of the Sky Vista frontage road late one night. A car had rammed him on the driver side and driven away. He had died from unspecified injuries related to the impact. It was either homicide or manslaughter. That is, he may have been deliberately murdered, or the fact that he died in the crash may have been the inadvertent result of a random accident. They never found the car that hit him, or the driver. The assumption seems to 42

have been that it was a random fatal hit-and-run rather than a deliberate homicide.

But there were unanswered questions hovering over the newspaper articles, much like there were when my mom talked about “the accident.” Trying to read between the lines in both situations, you really got the impression that there was a lot of information that was being held back, glossed over, hidden, or buried. I had lived with the uncertainty for six years now, with the strange realization that the more I found out, the more uncertain everything seemed to be. And I admit, even as part of me wanted to know, another part couldn’t stand to think about it.

WAG B O G

There’s this kid, Bobby Duboyce, who has some kind of skull disease and has to wear this football helmet at all times. The little white chin strap is always fastened because if the helmet comes off and he hits his head it could be very serious. Even though there are ear holes in it, he still has a hard time hearing people, so he’s always saying “what?” or “what’s that?”

He also has this problem where he is always tired, and he tends to fall asleep at random times. He often spends his time in class asleep, sometimes drooling, sometimes not, with his big helmet resting sideways on the desk. The teachers leave him alone. They don’t dare throw an eraser at his big helmet-head because they’re afraid his parents will sue their ass.

When he falls asleep in Center Court at lunch, though, it can get ugly. Hillmont High’s finest will come up to him and gently write things on his helmet with a permanent marker, like “pussy helmet head” and “I am a fag” and “my mom’s a twat.” The gentleness is so they don’t wake him up before 43

they’re done. His parents keep having to buy him new helmets, which they can’t be too pleased about. Maybe they have some kind of deal with the helmet people, and a big supply of backup helmets in the garage. He always has a new one the day after, on those occasions when the fine young men and ladies of Hillmont High School’s upper crust have decided to indulge in a little lighthearted helmet play.

We (Tennis with Guitars) were on our way to the cafeteria when we saw Bobby Duboyce passed out on the center lawn and realized that our social superiors had developed a new tactic. Some guys from the Honors Society were pouring Coke into one of Bobby Duboyce’s helmet’s ear holes to see how long it would take him to wake up. Then, when he did wake up, one of them pinned the helmet to the ground and another continued pouring the Coke, presumably to see how long it would take him to start crying. Which was almost immediately. Then they scampered back to their girlfriends, who had been waiting for them by the lockers, and kissed them and grabbed their butts. Ah, young love. Mr. Teone was standing in front of his office door, smiling broadly. Figures.

Sam Hellerman said, “WAGBOG.”

Which stands for “what a great bunch of guys.”

I mention this because that’s when we decided to change the band name to Helmet Boy, with me on guitar, Sambiguity on bass and procrastination. First album: Helmet Boy II.

The bell rang. We watched Bobby Duboyce pick himself up and slink off to the boys’ bathroom near Area B. Sam Hellerman said, “Wait a sec,” and ran after him, either because he had to go to the bathroom himself, or more probably because he wanted to check to see if Bobby Duboyce was all right. Sam Hellerman is like that: he likes to keep tabs on 44

everybody who can’t beat him up. After the coast is clear, of course. I was standing by my locker, waiting for Sam Hellerman to return so we could continue on to Band, when I saw Mr. Teone lumbering toward me. Bummer.

Now, Mr. Teone is kind of like the Little Big Tom of Hillmont High School, in that his main job seems to be to walk around making strange comments. With LBT, though, the comments seem more or less good-natured. Mr. Teone’s comments always seem to have an undercurrent of malice.

And often, they make no sense at all.

He takes some cues from the sociopathic normal students, in fact. For example, my glasses are always slipping down on my nose, and somewhere along the line I developed the habit of pushing them back up with the palm of my hand, so that the palm slides up my nose and kind of hits my forehead between the eyes. And ever since I can remember, kids have mocked me by mimicking this motion whenever they see me coming. It’s not a big deal. But there’s something weird about seeing an adult do it, especially one who is supposed to be in charge of something. When Mr. Teone isn’t doing the Henderson-salute routine, he’s doing the nose-forehead slide. And after he has done it, his face will contort into a grotesque parody of a smile, as though to say “ain’t I something?” I call that psychopathic-moronic.

By the time Mr. Teone reached me, he was out of breath and sweating like a pig, but that didn’t stop him from doing the Chi-Mo nose-forehead slide.

“Naked day of zombies,” said Mr. Teone. “Day of suicide-osity.”

And then he started giggling like a maniac. I am often at a loss for words, it’s true, but at this moment, I felt the loss particularly keenly. What the hell? Maybe I hadn’t heard him 45

right—his funny, nasal, syllable-swallowing way of speaking often made it hard to understand him. He wasn’t inclined to explain, though.

He made me turn my T-shirt inside out because it had a skull on it, and I guess they had passed some kind of antiskull policy since the last time I’d worn it. I don’t look very good without a shirt, so standing there with my army coat between my knees, naked from the waist up while I clumsily reversed the shirt, was pretty embarrassing. Everyone was staring at me. Mr. Teone was staring, too, and laughing and kind of trembling. Pretty creepy.

Sam Hellerman didn’t show up at the oak tree after school that day. It was kind of weird. I waited for a while.

Then I couldn’t think of anything to do, so I just went home.

As soon as I opened the front door, I heard my mom call out from the back patio in the voice she always uses to ask me to fetch her lighter and cigarettes. I didn’t really hear how she phrased it but the tone was enough to tell me what she wanted.

And from the sounds coming from the patio, I could tell that I was about to walk in on a meeting of the Annoying Laugh Club.